"after" dates show up early?

If I set a due date like ">11/3/08", why does the task show up in my "All Tasks, by importance, filter out future tasks" list? That doesn't make sense to me since I said that task was "due on or after 11/3/08", right? I've been kludging this for a while by adding a start date, but it seems like that shouldn't be necessary. (And there's a bug in the iPhone app that seems to get start & due dates messed up somehow. I haven't tracked down the exact circumstances yet to reproduce it, but it happens frequently to me with the latest version. But that's for a different forum entry....)

That can't quite be right (or I'm doing something wrong). I have a high priority task that is listed as due ">Nov 07, 2008" and it shows up in my All Tasks, Sorted By Importance, Future Tasks Hidden with an importance level of 6. This is on 11/4, so the task isn't due for 3 days.

If I can get it to work as you say I can _almost_ live with it. It's still not the best for me, though. These ">" and "=" tasks are, in my mind, things I don't want to deal with until the day they are due. If I wanted reminders because I needed to do something, then they would instead be tasks with an earlier start date (because I can start them early) and a standard due date. Does that make sense? The way you say it should behave (and certainly the way it is behaving for me right now) is contrary to the meaning of ">" and "=".

I generally live by the All Tasks Sorted By Importance list, and if I have tasks that really can't be done until a later day (marked by ">" or "="), I'll be very confused if they show up early. Especially on the iPhone/Touch app since there's no indication that they're not really due yet. As an example, I have a drug that I take where I alternate the dose daily, with 100mg one day and 112mg the next. That's a task that should not show up early on my task list.

As I said, I've sort of gotten around the problem by using start dates, but it sort of makes the ">" and "=" markers pointless. I think the biggest problem I see is that the behavior you talk about where they show up a day early "in case you want to do something" really indicates a task that should have a start date and due date one day apart because you can start on it earlier than when it's due.

This is because these tasks are due soon and we don't want you to forget about them. If a task can't be started until after a date, then you should use the "start-date" field to track this. If a task has a start date in the future, it will be hidden. Due-date and start-date are different fields and are treated differently.